Dear Carsten,Your Wiiscan with the powering and on/off feature as described in the pdfis by far the best solution I have seen for primary schools.You provide excellent solutions for classroom useage of the Wii. For Dutch primary schools (video projector most times mounted from the ceiling) we would choose powering the Wii with a long power cable ( longer than 5 meters) and the electronics in a small enclosure near the PC to keep the USB cable short.

We will try your solution and compare it with the one we are thinking of, that isusing an Arduino.

Well, I think you can get a good idea of how it works by looking through the documentation found in the zip file, look under Doc/*

But briefly, the package works like just "another" wiimote connection utility. It continuously scans for wiimotes, and try to connect if any (known) motes is found.

Secondly it integrates with existing Whiteboard solutions software modules, so that these can automatically be started if a connection is established.

Third, it continuously monitor the health of the connection, restarting a connection attempt if the signal is lost.

Finally, the hardware serves to automatically power the wiimote up and down, so that a connection can be made fully automatic. The hardware is however not needed for "a handheld" solution, just press "sync" or "1-2" to make the connection. But the hardware makes it much easier to use!!

1) powers the wiimote using the PC USB +5V voltage (cuts it to around +2.8V internally). 2) cycles the power, that is turning it off and on in a sequence aimed to make the wiimote automatically connect.

The powering mode is controlled by the wiiscan software, and can be turned on and off by using the settings found in the inifile: three modes are currently supported:

a) no hardware mode: press "1-2" youself! b) USB hub control: turn on and off the USB hub to control power (a troublesome solution). c) dedicated hardware (chip) solution: use a USB IO chip to do the power cycling - easy and robust, but more expensive.